"Just a year after Congress imposed significant changes in the government's oft-criticized flood insurance program, howls of protest from homeowners facing higher premiums have coastal lawmakers pressing for delays that would preserve below-cost rates for hundreds of thousands of people in flood-risk areas."

"The government can't say how many people could confront higher premiums, but homeowners in places like Staten Island, N.Y., along the battered New Jersey coast and in low-lying areas of Louisiana, Florida and Texas face the prospect that new government surveys could produce flood insurance premium increases so big that they could be forced from their homes or see their market value plummet.

'That's insane,' said Robert Taylor, a homeowner in Des Allemands, La. Taylor said the new law and flood survey would bump his premiums from $400 to more than $28,000 a year. 'This community has been here since 1923 and has never, ever flooded. Ever.'"